Photos: Making Perfume and Harvesting Frankincense in Oman

Susan Hack traveled to Salalah, Oman, to report "In the Cradle of Scent," a piece on the sultanate's long history with fragrances, perfumes, and incense. Here, she shares her personal photos from the trip.

Oudh oils at Al Haramain Perfumes, Qurum branch, Muscat. This is an all-purpose shop where you can buy pure attars, or perfumes, such as these high quality oudhs of different origins (Myanmar, Cambodia, India); mixed blends; ready-made bakhoors; or ingredients for making your own bakhoors at home, including oudh chips and perfumed oils. Not only was it overwhelming trying to learn about unfamiliar scents, just picking the bottle was a kind of sensory overload.

Bakhoors and burner, at Al Haramain, Muscat, Oman. The white jar in the foreground contains ground coffee, which is sniffed between testing bakhoor samples to clear the olfactory sensors. The little blowtorch is for lighting the odorless charcoal disks onto which bakhoor is placed.

Bakhoor burners for weddings, available to rent at a shopping mall in Muscat, Oman.

Perfume stand at a shopping mall in Muscat. Bottles are sold separately. The brand is less important than mixing and matching scents to smell unique.

Famous bakhoor maker Laila al Baraka, at her shop in the Salalah perfume souk. The jars over her right shoulder contain raw frankincense.

Incense burners, frankincense at Laila al Baraka's shop

Salalah frankincense dealers' row in the Matruh souk, Muscat

Frankincense and bakhoor burners. The bamboo frame is for censing clothes.

Amouage flagship store, Muscat

Men's prayer hall at the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat. The scent of high-quality frankincense, burned in the AC plant, wafts through niches in the walls and perfumes the holy space in which 6,000 men can pray side by side.

Wedding bakhoor—chips of oudh wood soaked in perfumed oil and then cooked with sugar to fix the scentcool in the home of a Muscat bakhoor maker.

Sign at the bottom of the road to Jebel Akhdar, where Oman's famous roses grow at 7,000 feet above sea level.

The grade is so steep that many car brakes burn out on the descent; the dirt mound to the right of the wreck is an escape route for trucks that lose their brakes.

A pinnacle in the Jebel Akhdar range.

Roses are harvested from April until the beginning of June, the blossoms plucked before dawn while the dew is still on them. The petals are distilled into a liquid used in cooking and to sprinkle on guests as a ritual welcome; dried petals are blended with other ingredients for bakhoor.

Rose petals being distilled.

Villages cling to the cliffs where roses, apricots, and other fruits and herbs grow on terraced fields.

The Mughsayl cliffs north of Salalah. Frankincense trees here bear sap with a spicy orange scent. The trees grow inland to a distance of 50 miles; the nuanced smell of the sap, prized by connoisseurs as attentive to terroir as French winemakers, depends on soil and moisture. The most prized trees never see rain and survive only on the humidity carried by the seasonal monsoon which turns the arid coast as green as Ireland.

Sailors from as far away as Ming Dynasty China knew the coast and harbors of Dhofar, once the heart of the frankincense trade. Today luxury hotels are sprouting, and the government is hoping for a tourism boom.

A copper alembic for distilling frankincense oil.

Meeor, or myrhh, also grows in the Dhofar region. Burned, it smells a bit like pine with a hint of cinnamon.

Carved door in an abandoned frankincense merchant's house. Harvests are declining as Dhofar residents seek university jobs or turn to easier labor, such as oil field work and abalone fishing.

Samharam, an ancient harbor and depot for frankincense.

Window seat: Oman Air flight from Salaleh to Muscat, looking down at the four-thousand-year-old port of Samharam.

Between March and August, harvesters cut each tree three times, allowing the sap to dry over two to three weeks before collecting the frankincense. The same "wound" is recut, and the sap grows progressively thicker, opaque, and more fragrant; the third harvest is the most highly prized.

Mughsayl frankincense, which has an orange, spicy note.

Hojari incense, first harvest: The sap is thinner, and so pieces are flatter than the second and third harvests which produce whiter, rounder resin pearls. Translucent green Hojari is considered the finest frankincense.